


a dream within a dream

by bunyoul



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Surrealism, based on the NCTmentary videos, it all gets fixed though, the shipping stuff is mostly just implied
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-01
Updated: 2018-03-01
Packaged: 2019-03-25 16:32:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13838691
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bunyoul/pseuds/bunyoul
Summary: Mark can still visit them- but only in dreams





	a dream within a dream

**Author's Note:**

> the result of watching the nctmentary videos and 2 consecutive snow days  
> set around summer because being pretty much snowed in for 2 days straight tends to make you wish for warmer weather  
> this is kind of surreal and non-linear + also my first attempt at writing anything nct related but i hope you can enjoy it regardless!  
> recommended listening: [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PyPQpEK2gVE) and [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSL4D5PtsBM)

_ Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake.  _

\- Henry David Thoreau

  
  
  


_ 3 weeks after _

 

“I’ve been studying dreams.” Johnny turns to speak to Mark as the numbers on the digital panel above the elevator doors count downwards. One of the lights in the corner flickers, a brief interruption in the dull yellow tones that wash out of them. 

 

“Alright.” Mark’s response is noncommittal and the elevator halts, the doors sliding open and the view of Johnny’s lab opening up in front of them. The room is lit badly- shedding an air of deliberate ambience upon it, despite it most likely being due to poor planning and decoration. 

 

It emphasises the glow of the machine in the corner; a haphazard mix-and-match of tv screens, keyboards and wires, buzzing with static. 

 

“It’s a work in progress.” Johnny clarifies as he steps up to the machine and flips a switch on the wall behind it. One of the screens jumps to life, displaying a sweep of green code. Mark looks down at his feet. “Do you have the camera?” Johnny asks.

 

Mark hesitates, hand hovering above his bag, before reaching in. “Yeah, it’s here.”

 

He feels Johnny’s hand come to rest on his shoulder, comforting. His voice is unsure as he speaks, as if working quietly through a dilemma. The static from the screens casts unfamiliar shadows on the floor. “You don’t have to do this, you know.”

 

“I want to.” Mark affirms. As he puts the camera into Johnny’s hands, it’s the most certain he’s felt in a while.

 

_ 2 weeks after _

 

A song that Mark doesn’t know the words to plays on the radio as he rests his head against the passenger-side window of Johnny’s car. Houses roll by outside and the sky is dull and grey. Lifeless. Mark bites at his fingernails and closes his eyes. 

 

He feels like the sky. 

 

“Oh.” The car slows, and Johnny speaks up from the driver’s seat. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize-”

 

Mark opens his eyes and glances out the window again. It’s right in front of him- the hill and the house and the tree. Burned to the ground. It’s the first time he’s seen it since. Johnny holds onto the steering wheel too tightly, blood draining from his hands. 

 

Undoing his seatbelt, Mark climbs out of the car and walks towards the hill. He hears Johnny shut his own door behind him, footsteps following him across the worn asphalt. The grass is brittle and dry under his feet as he walks up the familiar pathway. The air still smells like smoke- burning at the back of his throat. If Johnny calls after him, it doesn’t register.

 

There’s no house any more- just piles upon piles of blackened timber and dirty green roof slates; a scattering of dull colour amongst the wreckage. The tree is gone too- branches no longer a place to sit and reminisce, twisted and scorched, stretching up into the sky as if asking for help.

 

The sky gives no answer.

 

The timber cracks and disintegrates under his feet as he begins to climb onto the remains of the building, hands and clothes smudged with charcoal. He recalls back to science lessons.  _ ‘all living things are made up of carbon’ _ .

 

So how can a place with so much of it be so dead. 

 

He feels Johnny watching him, ready to intervene- ever the attentive one. Mark watches wood and dust crumble under his hands as he pulls back beams and floorboards and smoke-damaged tiles. 

 

He finds it wrapped in a shred of half-scorched curtain fabric- the outer casing a little warped from heat damage but relatively unharmed. 

 

Donghyuck’s camera. 

 

The air feels heavy with electricity, no longer lifeless.

 

_ 5 weeks before _

 

“Come on, put it away.” Renjun laughs and swats at the camera in Donghyuck’s hands, threatening to make him drop it. Sunlight streams in through the broken glass of the window, catching on the edges of shards and casting shimmering patterns on the opposite wall. Donghyuck jumps out of Renjun’s reach, nearly kicking over Chenle’s bottle of lemonade as he does so. 

 

Mark watches from across the room. 

 

“Just do it one more time and then I’ll put it away. I promise.” The grin on Donghyuck’s face says clearly that he has no intention of sticking to his promises. Renjun’s expression is reluctant. 

 

“Your voice is good- don’t worry about it.” Jeno calls out encouragement from where he’s sitting on the windowsill, struggling to remove the lid from his lemonade bottle.

 

“I’ve heard better.” A teasing response from Jisung; sitting cross-legged on the ground drinking his lemonade through a straw. Jaemin moves as if to throw his shoe across the room at him. 

 

Renjun pauses, apprehensive, then sings, a short section of a song Donghyuck kept hearing on the radio and wouldn’t stop humming between classes. He takes a sip of his lemonade as soon as he’s finished, ears turning red from both embarrassment and the late summer heat. 

 

Donghyuck pauses, looking up from the camera viewfinder with a grin. “Sorry- I didn’t start filming fast enough. Can you do it again?”

 

_ 4 weeks after  _

  
  


The lighting in the lab is still bad as Johnny pulls out a stack of VHS tapes and places them on the worksurface in front of Mark. Each of them is labelled in messy handwriting, the pen ink smudged and blotted as if written hurriedly. 

 

“I’m sorry it took me a while to convert it all- there was a lot of footage.” Johnny looks apprehensive as Mark picks up the tapes, turning them over in his hands slowly. “Again; if you don’t want to do this it’s fine. I’ll ask Ten to help me out instead.” 

 

Mark hands over one of the tapes to Johnny. The static on the TV screen hums; background noise. “I want to.” 

 

“I set up a place for you to sleep here.” Johnny motions towards a couch, faded fabric covered with pillows and a blanket, next to the machine. He smiles, attempting to provide comfort. He looks nervous- VHS tape in hand as the static glow of the screens catches on its edges. “If things don’t go to plan, you can just wake up.” 

 

He plugs the tape into the machine, and Mark sleeps.

 

_ Dream _

 

The house is in front of him, and the sky is filled with stars that feel close enough to touch. 

 

They’re all there too- Chenle and Renjun sitting in the branches of the tree with crystals and glass pendants hanging all around them, suspended in the air as if frozen mid-fall; prisms that catch the starlight and throw it back in full colour. They’re talking- Mark can’t hear them but he smiles as they do. 

 

Jisung is sitting on the doorstep with a games console in hand, the buttons he taps causing flowers to bloom around his feet. Jaemin picks one of the flowers as he walks past and drops it onto Jeno’s head as he leans out of the kitchen window. 

 

“You’re late.” Donghyuck remarks from where he’s standing beside Mark, camera in hand and the legs of his trousers rolled up to his knees to create makeshift shorts. He grins- bright as the stars that hang overhead, and grabs hold of Mark’s hand, pulling him up the path impatiently.

 

Mark smiles back and follows.

 

_ 1 year before _

 

“They removed all the fences and hazard signs from the abandoned house on the hill.” Donghyuck drops his lunch tray down on the table, elbowing his way in to sit between Mark and Jaemin. He takes a bite of his sandwich and looks expectantly around the rest of the group.

 

“I’m assuming this is you suggesting that we should go and explore it?” Jeno questions.

 

“You bet it is.” Donghyuck speaks with his mouth full, and Mark kicks his ankles under the table.

 

“Do you think there’ll be ghosts?” Chenle speaks up first, sliding his tray away from Jisung as the younger attempts to steal pieces of his cake.

 

The response is a simultaneous chorus of “Ghosts don’t exist.” from Renjun and “I hope so.” from Jisung. Mark looks at the two of them, watching each other across the cafeteria table with the noise of other students pushing past in the background.

 

While the idea of exploring an abandoned house doesn’t fully appeal- Mark has long since given up on resisting Donghyuck’s plans. “We do need a new place to meet at over the summer- this could be it.” 

 

The smile he receives from Donghyuck could rival the sun.

 

Summer air fills their senses as they walk in a line to the hill after school, dust and heat and wisps of cloud surrounding them. Mark walks next to Renjun, who talks about his project for art class as they go, detailing the finishing touches he needs to make to his final piece before school ends to give way for summer. 

 

They stop to get ice cream, and it melts over their hands as they walk up the hill, the grass dry under their feet and the dirt path baked solid by the sun above. Donghyuck has his camera in hand and he swings it around to face them, walking backwards up the hill to keep them in frame. Mark waves to the camera, nearly dropping his ice cream.

 

The house isn’t in as bad of a condition as they expected- the windows are shattered and the door is hanging at an odd angle, the paintwork peeling off, however it seems stable,the roof all in one piece and the exterior unmarked. There’s a tree in the garden outside, branches close to the ground and easy to climb, wide enough to create a good place to sit. 

 

When they head inside, it’s surprisingly light, the sun streaming in through the windows and catching on the dust spiralling in the air. There’s furniture- a sofa with a worn-down fabric cover, a table, a bed in one of the upstairs room with a mattress that has seen better days. Curtains with faded fabric and torn edges hang by the windows and across some of the doorframes. They settle in one of the rooms upstairs, empty of furniture save a broken wooden chair, the wallpaper faded and the shattered window looking out over the garden and the summer-heavy skies.

 

“I think it’s perfect.” Renjun speaks up first, passing a bottle of water from his school bag around the group. Jaemin nods in agreement. 

 

“No ghosts though.” Chenle almost sounds disappointed at the news.

 

“Not for now at least.” Donghyuck sweeps his camera across the room, falling on mark first. He waves it away with a smile and a shake of his head.

 

“Film Jaemin instead.”

 

_ 5 weeks after _

 

Returning to school is hard.

 

The empty seats in his classrooms, the empty table at lunch, people asking Mark if he wants to sit with them instead, pitying looks thrown across the cafeteria.

 

It’s hard to forget when there’s reminders everywhere.

 

The dreams help though.

 

_ Dream _

 

Renjun is sitting in the tree again, the crystals and flowers swinging back and forth in the nonexistent breeze. The sky stretches up into clouds and galaxies, stars scattered like dust in the sky as fog shifts across the ground below. 

 

He looks up from his sketchpad as Mark climbs up to join him in the tree, the prisms amongst its branches shifting to accommodate his footsteps. “What are you drawing?” Mark asks as he sits down, leaning in to take a peek at the pages of the sketchpad.

 

Renjun puts his pen down and angles the book towards Mark. It’s a sketch of the house, faded at the edges and in some places unfinished, flowers blossoming out of the windows and doorframes. He has a smudge of pen on his cheek- right under the place where the frames of his glasses rest. 

 

“I feel like we’re all connected in some way.” Renjun speaks, closing his sketchpad and dropping it over the edge of the tree branch. It doesn’t fall, hanging still along with the rest of the crystals and prisms. “Like we’re sharing the same dream.”

 

Mark wakes up.

 

_ 2 weeks before _

 

Jeno is doing magic tricks.

 

He brought a pack of cards to the house with him, along with a declaration that he’d been taught how to do magic by a family friend. They all sit cross-legged on the wooden floor in one of the bedrooms, the colours on the quilt behind them faded and weather-worn. The light breeze that sweeps in through the window does little to quell the summer heat.

 

Donghyuck has his camera rolling as Jeno spreads the cards out on the floor in front of them.

 

“Mark, choose a card,” Jeno gestures towards them, and Mark chooses hesitantly, handing his choice back to Jeno. “the six of hearts.” Jeno announces. A card representing regret; Mark had once been told.

 

Concentrating, Jeno re-stacks the cards and inserts the six of hearts into the middle. “This is a teleportation trick,” He states. “I’m going to make the card rise to the top.” There’s the sound of shuffling papers as Jeno flicks the cards, sending the dust around them cartwheeling in the sunlight. He takes the card off the top. Six of hearts.

 

Mark laughs, impressed. “That was really good.”

 

A shrug from Jeno. “I just started working on it yesterday- I’ll get even better at it soon.”

 

_ 7 weeks after _

 

It’s raining when Mark leaves the lab.

 

He doesn’t have an umbrella so he runs home, shoes scattering up spray and mud. He holds his hands above his head to shield himself from the sky, the arms of his clothes soaked within minutes. Cars drive past with their windscreen wipers throwing droplets to the side and their tyres turning the water on the road to mud.

 

He finds himself outside of the house again, slipping on the muddied path, through the rusted gates and up to the pile of rain-soaked timber and rubble. He sits and the rain rolls down his face, in his hair and clinging to his eyelashes. The sky shivers with thunder and electricity.

 

Mark waits, unsure of how long he sits for, under the rain and the sky and the blackened tree branches. It’s there that he spots it, hanging from the tree where leaves once resided. Faded and waterlogged, a sketch of the house- the windows and doors overflowing with flowers. 

 

He takes it and runs.

  
  


_ 1 week before _

 

It’s only him and Donghyuck this time. Summer draws to a close, the air hazy with the season’s dying breaths, heavy with dust and birdsong. They sit on the doorstep to the house, Donghyuck’s camera trained on the dying flowers that lace through the brittle grass and dry ground. 

 

His head rests against Mark’s shoulder, faded-red hair catching the sunlight.

 

Their knees are close enough to touch and Mark’s fingers are tangled in between Donghyuck’s, the air between them comfortably quiet.

 

“I wish summer would go on forever.” Donghyuck muses, his voice sleepy despite the fact that it’s only just late afternoon. He lowers his camera.

 

“Well that’s just too bad.” Mark returns, no bite in his words. 

 

_ It’s always summer when you’re here with me  _ goes unsaid. 

 

_ Dream _

 

They all lie on the grass outside, hand in hand, spread out under the stars as galaxies and nebulas shift in tones of purple and pink. Clouds of stardust lace between the trees and Chenle complains as Jisung accidentally elbows him in the stomach.

 

“How do we know what’s a dream and what isn’t.” Jaemin speaks up.

 

“Now isn’t the time for philosophy.” Donghyuck shoots back, his voice somewhere close to Mark’s ear. 

 

“Think about it though. What we think are dreams could be real life and we’d never be able to tell.” The statement is quiet but for Mark it rings out far too loudly. He sighs and looks back up at the stars hanging above them; larger-than-life.

 

_ 10 minutes before _

 

Donghyuck is playing with matches.

 

He sits in the corner of the room with a box of them that he found in one of the old kitchen drawers of the house, marvelling at the fact that they still work. Mark watches quietly as he strikes them, a flame jumping to life, then puts them out to watch the smoke curl up and mix with the dust in the air. There’s a small pile of used matches discarded beside him, lying on the floorboards. 

 

Donghyuck waves a lit match in Chenle’s direction, teasing. The younger lets out a high-pitched yell and stumbles backwards, tripping over Jeno and Renjun playing cat’s cradle on the floor. With a laugh, Donghyuck blows out the match and drops it onto the pile. 

 

Mark doesn’t know what happens or when it happens, but within a heartbeat Donghyuck is shouting and the curtain draped over the doorframe is in flames. 

 

_ 8 weeks after _

 

“Do you think dreams can affect real life?” Mark asks Johnny as he sits in the lab, glancing across to where the older sorts through reels of tape and slides, tangled up in a battered cardboard box.

 

“I don’t know. We haven’t got far enough to study that yet,” Johnny looks up from the box- filled with recordings of dreams and memories. “But if real life can influence dreams, then I don’t see why it can’t be the other way around.”

 

_ 1 day after _

 

Mark knows he’s the only one left before anyone can even tell him.

 

The pitying glances are proof enough.

 

_ Dream _

 

Jisung is dancing in one of the upstairs rooms. Mark can hear his footsteps, falling heavy against the floorboards and echoing down into the room below. Donghyuck and Chenle are up there with him, as told by their voices- Chenle’s encouraging shouts and Donghyuck’s calls for Jisung to stop moving out of frame.

 

The sky outside the windows is still filled with stars. 

 

“I’m going to walk around outside of the house for a bit.” Mark announces to Renjun and Jaemin, who sit opposite Jeno as he performs card tricks on the scuffed wooden table.

 

“I’ll come.” Renjun stands up first, followed by the other two who also nod in agreement.

 

The world outside is filled with mist and fog, cars parked down the middle of the street with no drivers and no sign that they had ever worked at all. Frozen in time. The fog makes it difficult to see, settling around their heads like clouds in orbit. They’re quiet as they walk, the thought of breaking the silence feeling immeasurably wrong. 

 

The flat expanse of wall outside of the empty convenience store is ideal. Mark pulls a stick of chalk out of his bag that he didn’t remember putting there, and writes- large sweeping letters that scratch against the rough surface of the brickwork. He nods, satisfied, and walks back through the fog.

  
  


_ 9 weeks after _

 

When Mark wakes up and walks home from the lab, it’s still there- a word in pale pink chalk swept across the brickwork outside of the convenience store.

 

_ DREAM. _

 

_ 10 weeks after _

 

“Can you show me how the machine works?” Mark glances at the static filled screens while Johnny types codes on one of its many keyboards. He looks up, surprised.

 

“Sure. Come over here and I’ll show you.” the lab still has bad lighting, one of the fluorescent tubes sunk into the ceiling starting to flicker in the same way as the one in the elevator. Johnny motions to the screens of the machine. “These let me watch what’s going on in a person’s dreams. The one with the code shows the statistics- the participant name, the tape number, the length of the dream, and the ones with the graphs let me monitor the state of the dream as it’s happening,” He motions again to the keyboards. “These let me set things up so that nothing goes wrong inside the dreams.” 

 

“What about this one?” Mark points to the smallest screen, tucked among the flickering static. It looks small enough to have been pulled from a games console rather than being made up of old computer monitors and televisions like the rest of them. 

 

“That one controls the time of the dream. It’s supposed to make sure that the dreams happen in the present and don’t run over. We’ve never really tested it before though- Taeyong is still researching the possible consequences of altering dream times.” 

 

Mark nods. “Alright.”

 

“You can watch me use it if you want- I have recordings of some of my own dreams that I could play through.” Johnny waits for Mark’s confirmation, then reaches into one of the boxes, pulling out a tape with his own name scribbled on the front. He talks Mark through the steps of turning on the machine, placing the tape in and typing out variables. The graphs begin to plot out sections of the dream, detailing REM sleep and levels of activity. Playing out on the screen like a video recording is the dream- a room and the ocean and an old piano, nothing that makes any sense- then Johnny flips the switch on the back wall and the screens fade back to static. 

 

“And that’s how it works.” Johnny concludes, reaching across to mess up Mark’s hair as he speaks.

 

_ 9 weeks before _

 

Although it’s raining, they all still arrive at the house after the school day ends, walking up the hill to the rusted gates through the late Spring showers. Donghyuck sings as he walks- songs about Summer and sunlight, as if the rain will go away if he wishes it hard enough. 

 

Only Renjun has an umbrella, and Chenle and Jeno have pushed their way under it to shelter from the rain. Jaemin holds his school bag over his head, doing nothing but getting his files wet. They’ve given up on keeping dry by the time they reach the house, throwing their bags down in the kitchen and heading straight back outside.

 

They play basketball out in the rain, slipping in the mud and barely able to see through the water that clings to their hair and eyelashes. As they play, the sky cracks open, a splinter of sunlight shining down and halting the rain. Mark stops to watch it- the first breath of summer shattering through the clouds- and is quickly hit in the knees with the basketball, thrown along with a shout from Donghyuck.

 

“I thought you were the one that’s good at basketball?” Mark picks up the ball and starts playing again.

 

The clouds remain open, and it feels like the sun is shining just for the seven of them.

 

_ Dream _

 

Mark avoids the house and runs straight into the fog beyond it.

 

The stars are brighter than ever, the only thing visible beyond the mist that settles on the ground, giving the landscape an eerie sort of ambience- cars and litter and tree branches frozen in time as he runs the familiar path towards the lab. There’s nobody there when he arrives; there’s nobody  _ anywhere  _ aside from the house; and he takes the staircase, the upside-down numbers on the elevator panel indicating that it won’t work for him. There’s fog even on the staircase, and his footsteps feel far too loud, shattering the silence.

 

The lab is empty of mist, completely clear.

 

The lighting is still bad- worse than in real life- dull blues and greens from the ceiling and the glow of the machine. Objects float above the tables, pens and notes and VHS tapes all hanging mid-motion, rotating slowly in place. Walking closer to the machine, Mark can see himself, asleep on the sofa of the lab with Johnny sitting opposite him, preoccupied with something on the screen of his phone. 

 

He gets to work.

 

Flipping the switch on the back of the machine, he goes through the steps Johnny had taught him, the steps he had written down and relayed to himself over and over, lest he forget them. The other screens flicker to life. Focusing on the smallest, tucked between the graph of heart rate and the timer of REM sleep, Mark slides the keyboard onto his lap and adjusts the time.

 

He sets it back- 9 weeks, 10 weeks, 11 weeks- then replaces the keyboard. The screens flicker, a motion that would show confusion if the machine was sentient. Nothing seems to change, but Mark still holds his breath.

 

_ “If real life can influence dreams, then I don’t see why it can’t be the other way around.” _

 

_ 30 minutes before _

 

Mark wakes up in his own room and starts running.

 

_ 20 minutes before _

 

His feet kick up dust as he runs up the hill towards the house.

 

The house which is still there, still intact, still with broken windows and faded roof tiles, still with the tree standing tall outside; its branches filled with leaves and sunlight. Jisung is leaning out of the top floor window as he approaches, chin propped up in his hands.

 

“You’re late.” He calls down at Mark as he approaches, voice teasing. “Donghyuck found some matches in the kitchen drawer and we’re going to see if they still work.” Jisung disappears from the window, and Mark starts running again. 

 

He doesn’t think he’s ever made it up the stairs so fast before.

 

_ 10 minutes before _

 

Donghyuck is playing with matches, before Mark runs into the room and takes them out of his hands.

 

Renjun and Jeno look up from their game of cat’s cradle as Donghyuck protests. Mark drops the matches into his bag, out of reach, and tries to calm his breathing.

 

“You’re going to set fire to something if you do that.” Mark cautions, then sits down heavily on the wooden floor. Donghyuck pouts for a while, unamused, then takes his camera and goes to film the spider Chenle found on the floor instead.

 

Mark throws the matches away when he gets home.

 

_ Later _

 

He’s scared to fall asleep, scared of dreams within dreams and things going wrong all over again. When he looks outside, the stars fill the sky, but they look so far away.

 

_ Awake _

 

Upon waking, Mark runs for a second time.

 

Johnny tries to stop him in the kitchen as he pulls his shoes on, touching his arm to catch his attention and speaking in a voice that makes it clear he’s just woken up. “I’ve been studying-”

 

Mark cuts him off. “Dreams; I know.” Shrugging Johnny’s hand off his shoulder, Mark ties his shoes and runs out of the door, down the road and through the early morning fog, the sunlight weak overhead and fading from Summer into Autumn. He doesn’t stop- not when he trips over an uneven edge in the pavement and not when he’s nearly bowled off his feet by a cyclist who shouts for him to slow down. He only stops when he reaches the hill.

 

The house is still whole, and there, standing in front of the gates, Donghyuck is waiting for him.

  
There’s no stars in sight, and this time Mark  _ knows _ he’s not dreaming. 

**Author's Note:**

> if you made it to the end of this weird non-linear mess then i congratulate you  
> remember to support ncts upcoming comebacks + feel free to come and talk to me on tumblr @bunyoul or on twitter @_renjuns if you have any questions or just want to talk about nct !  
> as always all feedback is really appreciated !! ヽ(‘ ∇‘ )ノ


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